There are many good reasons to participate. Completing the questionnaire provides an opportunity for you to reflect on your individual experiences as a student. When you participate, you are also making an important contribution to improving the following:

• the study programs offered at Freie Universität Berlin and the study conditions,
• the university’s advising and service institutions,
• the study program’s focus on professional careers.

Subsequent generations of students will benefit from these improvements.

The survey is aimed exclusively at graduates who passed a final exam in the 2021/2022 winter semester or the 2022 summer semester at Freie Universität Berlin, including those who finished their doctorates at the university in 2022.

If you are currently continuing your studies, we are interested in how you evaluate your completed bachelor's degree.

The graduate survey is part of a nationwide scientific research project. The Cooperation Project on Graduate Studies (KOAB) is coordinated by the Institute for Applied Statistics (ISTAT). Approximately 70,000 graduates from more than 60 universities participate in this project each year.

The KOAB project comprises a first and a second survey. In the first survey, all graduates of the participating universities are interviewed about one to one and a half years after their graduation. The graduates are also asked for their consent to participate in a second survey, which takes place approximately five years after their graduation. The second survey is of high scientific value, as it provides robust information on the medium to long-term career development of graduates, as well as insights into career entry.

As part of the KOAB project, ISTAT uses the data supplied by graduates of the participating higher education institutions to create an anonymous “scientific use file.” This makes it possible to perform a detailed analysis of how higher education study program conditions and offerings affect graduates’ future activities and professional success.

You can access the online survey here.

On the website you will be asked to enter your personal access code (PIN). The PIN has been sent to you by letter.

The randomly generated personal access code (PIN) that has been sent to you by post has two functions:

1. It ensures that the questionnaire can be completed only by people who belong to the target group.
2. During the survey period, you can use the same PIN to re-access the survey at any time and continue from where you left off as long as you have not completed the survey on a final basis.

The personal data and the information in the questionnaire will not be merged at any time. In this respect, the survey data is completely anonymous at all times.

When reporting, all results are presented in aggregated form for groups of at least ten survey participants, so that no conclusions can be drawn about individual persons.

In § 4 of its data protection statutes, Freie Universität Berlin permits the collection, storage, and use of student and alumni contact data for the purpose of conducting evaluations. Freie Universität Berlin was authorized to issue this regulation by § 6 Abs. 1 Nr. 4 Berliner Hochschulgesetz i.V. mit § 6 b Abs. 2 Berliner Hochschulgesetz.

These addresses are used for the postal letters to the graduates and are deleted after the end of the survey period.

The survey data are first stored on a server of ISTAT. After completion of the survey phase, the survey data are processed by ISTAT. The participating universities will receive the results for their study programs in the form of tables. For each study program in which more than 10 graduates took part in the survey, a report will be produced. For small programs with a response of less than 10 graduates, cumulative reports are produced every two years so that these programs also receive feedback. At Freie Universität Berlin these results are used for quality development.

In addition, the survey data are used for research purposes. As part of the KOAB project, ISTAT is compiling an anonymized scientific use file from the survey data of graduates of Freie Universität Berlin and from the survey data of all other universities participating in the project. This allows for analysis of higher education and labor market research issues based on nationwide data.

You are welcome to contact the project team by e-mail for any further questions or comments you may have.
(lsq@fu-berlin.de)